


kairos

by uselessphillie



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, 2009x2018, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Light Angst, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 03:03:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16338587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uselessphillie/pseuds/uselessphillie
Summary: (greek, n.) - the perfect, delicate, crucial moment; the fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportune atmosphere for action, words, or movement(a 2009 fic. sort of.)





	kairos

**Author's Note:**

> for the anon who made me [this art](https://moon-boye.tumblr.com/post/175508670365/some-incredible-art-for-my-fic-october-to) and requested in return a fic based on _hey, that’s no way to say goodbye,_ specifically [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz38Vxkyow4) roberta flack cover. i’m sorry that your ask has sat unanswered in my inbox for three months. i had to write some bad stuff first in order for this piece to fall together. i hope that you see this, and that you love it as much as i do xx 
> 
> many thanks to katie (@[knlalla](https://knlalla.tumblr.com/)) for the beta work on this, and for continuing to be my friend even after i rejected all of her conjunction additions.

 _______________________________________________________

_I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm /_

_Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm_

_______________________________________________________

It’s just not fair.

Not fair for the universe to have given him this perfect boy in his Twitter replies, in the blurry pixels of his laptop screen, in his bed, finally, just to rip it all away again.

Phil pulls the duvet up over their shoulders, as if that could protect them from the ticking of the clock.

It can’t, but his room is cold anyway. He nudges his freezing bare toes against Dan’s shins.

Dan says _oi, none of that,_ voice thick with sleep. Even only halfway to consciousness, he makes a show of shuffling out of toe-poking range. Phil rejects the motion immediately, reaching out and connecting with the soft skin of Dan’s waist, dragging him back into the cocoon of his arms.

Where he belongs.

Phil paints his body along the planes of Dan’s back, tries not to think about the ticking. Debates the merits of going back to sleep versus getting Dan under him again.

Dan pushes his hips back with something like _intent,_ as though Phil hasn’t already made up his mind.

He takes his time, laying Dan out against the sheets. Nothing about _this_ feels dull. Dan is bright and solid and real and so Phil commits himself to memorizing every inch of gently tanned skin laid out before him, starting with the two small freckles where Dan’s smile dents his cheek and moving down, down, down.

With lips pressed somewhere in the neighborhood of Dan’s left hip, he glances up.

Honestly, Dan looks like something out of his best wet dream - flushed and breathing heavily and propped up with one arm tucked under his head. He’s haloed by the soft morning light, mid-autumn sun making gold out of brown. It’s overwhelming in the best way possible.

Phil sucks a mark into Dan’s skin where it’s stretched taut over his hip bone, where Dan will be able to feel it later, on a train speeding towards the other end of the country.

Above him, Dan buries a moan in the single syllable of Phil’s name and tugs gently on a handful of his hair, pulling him upwards. Phil goes without protest

(as he always will)

and kisses Dan soundly on the mouth. It’s better this way, to kiss and kiss until the words it’s far too soon to say drown in his throat.

***

On Skype somewhere in the middle of September, Dan had said _I need to tell you something._

Phil had squinted across the pixelated connection, made worse by the type of darkness that only exists at 3 am. They’d been laying in contented silence for at least a hundred breaths, he’d been counting.

_Phil, listen. When you meet me it might not be me._

_Of course it’ll be you, who else would it be?_

Dan had leaned in close to the screen, his features coming into focus with the aid of the blue electronic glow. He propped his chin up in his hand. He looked upset, or maybe just melancholy.

_A version of me that traveled back to that point. Through time._

More squinting. Phil had taken his glasses off when they decided to lay down and get cozy under their respective duvets.

But at 3 am, things like time travel become perfectly logical options for commuting. That’s why, instead of the questions he probably should’ve asked, Phil had said _surely there’s more exciting places you’d like to time travel to, Dan._

A ghost of a smile had crossed Dan’s face as he snuggled down deeper into his duvet.

_Maybe. I just feel like I might want to keep going back there. To see you._

***

The realization doesn’t hit him until he’s watching the October sun make its shallow arch into the sky over the dip of Dan’s shoulder. He presses his forehead against Dan’s skin, trying to remember exactly what Dan had said that night.

_It might not be me._

_I mean, of course it’ll be me. It’s complicated. I can only ever go backwards, only to places I’ve been before. If it’s a really clear memory, a really good one, it makes it easier to jump._

_It already feels clear, meeting you. Like if I focused hard enough, I could reach out and touch it in my mind._

_Does that make any sense? I’ve never really talked about this stuff to anyone before. It’s late, probably tomorrow you should just forget I even said anything. It probably won’t matter, when I see you on the 19th it’ll be me, I promise._

It’s not him.

Phil knows it all at once, as though he’s seeing Dan now with clear eyes for the very first time. Knows it in the way Dan’s skin is a shade more tan than he remembers from their last Skype call, in the way he hadn’t put sugar in his coffee when they’d ventured down to the kitchen earlier. But he wants to hear it from Dan, wants to be sure.

“Is it you?” He asks Dan’s shoulder, keeping his voice intentionally light and measured. But Dan goes stiff in his arms and, well, that’s really all the answer he needs, isn’t it?

Dan turns to look at him, drags a thumb across his cheekbone. “I thought you’d forgotten about that.”

Phil flexes his fingers against Dan’s waist, all the questions he has suddenly sticking in his throat.

“Phil.” Dan looks just this side of desperate. “It’s me, I told you it would be me. It’ll always be me.”

“Where did you come from?”

_“Phil.”_

“Where’s my Dan?”

“I _am_ your Dan. We’re all the same.”

“All?” Phil hears the hysterical quality of his voice but is powerless to suppress it.

“I can’t tell you the things you want to know, Phil. There aren’t easy answers. Time is bendy and sometimes I can bend it. Sometimes it bends me.”

The room suddenly feels tilted on some sort of cosmic axis. Phil untangles his limbs from not-Dan's, tries to scoot backwards and away. The space beyond the edge of the bed might as well be an formless abyss for how untethered he feels right now. Not-Dan moves with him, catches him before he can tumble off into it, hovers over him in a way that should feel protective but instead just makes Phil feel trapped.

"Look at me, Phil. You're okay, everything's okay. Every _one_ 's okay. We've done this before, you and me, can you remember? Try to remember."

Phil closes his eyes, presses the heels of his palms against them until his vision swirls a starry red. It's too hard to look at not-Dan, because he's got Dan's eyes and Dan's freckles and Dan's hobbit hair that he only ever lets Phil see, because that _meant something_ between them and now everything feels fake. Buried under the confusion and the panic, there's a fast-sprouting seed of anger, because his Dan has said _you know, you're the only person I never seem to be able to lie to._

He opens his eyes and pushes up against not-Dan's chest. Dan goes easily, falling back into the blankets and allowing Phil to get up. Phil staggers to his feet and pretends that he can't see the tears forming in not-Dan's eyes. He picks up a random assortment of clothes from the floor and cradles them against his chest before moving towards the door of his room.

"You need to put some clothes on," he says before turning the corner into the hall. His voice sounds far away from his own ears, like it belongs to someone else entirely.

Maybe it does.

***

He goes to Martyn's room.

It's the guest bedroom, really. Martyn hasn't spent more than a handful of days in it for years now. But it still feels like the place where Phil worked out a lot of his problems, sat on the ugly blue carpet with his brother's weird techno-pop beats as the soundtrack.

He dresses hastily before sliding down against the closed door. Drawing his knees up to his chest, he takes a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. He tries to imagine a pulsing, rhythmic bass, the sound of Martyn's foot tapping along against the floor. There's a spot along the doorframe where Phil's incessant worrying has left its mark, the wallpaper frayed and peeled away by his restless fingers. He picks at it now with shaky hands. In his head, Martyn says _your boyfriend's a time traveler and you're upset about it? I thought you wanted to live in some freak scifi universe._

Dan had said _we've done this before._ What does that even mean?

_Can you remember?_

He tries. Somewhere at the very edges of his memory, there's...well. There's Dan on the train platform in Manchester, stepping off and finding Phil instantly in the crowd, like he'd known exactly where to look. There's Dan brushing a pinky along his, saying _let's go get coffee, yeah?_ Or had that been Phil’s idea? There's Dan spread out under him, pulling him closer, whispering against his skin, _I feel like I've known you forever. Maybe I'll know you forever._

It makes him dizzy, trying to sort through all the not-memories. The universe is tilting again but this time Phil's tilting with it, scared and flailing with the knowledge that he'll never be able to put it upright.

He used to turn to Martyn when he felt overwhelmed with things he couldn't understand.

Now, he just wants Dan.

____________________________________________________________

_But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie /_

_Your eyes are soft with sorrow_

____________________________________________________________

Dan is sitting cross-legged in the center of bed when Phil works up enough courage to go back. He's dressed in joggers and a plain black jumper, sleeves pulled down over his knuckles. He's even put his socks back on. He looks small and scared and fragile and not like any version of himself that Phil wants to know.

"Hey," Phil says softly, hovering just inside the doorway.

Dan looks up with a jolt, as though he hadn't heard Phil approaching. He opens his mouth around something, maybe a greeting, maybe an explanation, maybe an apology, but no sound comes out. Instead, he pinches the black fabric more tightly around his fists, curls in on himself. Phil can't ignore the tears this time.

_We’re all the same._

Phil steps forward tentatively, settling himself on the edge of the bed. Dan is shaking with the effort of keeping his tears from spilling over.

"S-sorry, I'm sorry," Dan manages through ragged breaths. "Please don't - don't send me away, you can't, it'll mess everything up, and then - "

A breath. The timbre of his voice pitches up, somewhere towards hysteria. "And then - "

Dan finally loses the battle, a sob breaking out of his chest. He lists forward helplessly and Phil catches him, of course he does, gathers Dan or not-Dan or maybe both of them or all of them in his arms and holds them tightly.

"Shhh, it's okay, Dan. I'm not gonna send you away, _god._ I wouldn't do that."

Dan pulls back to look at him then, wide-eyed and face blotchy and tear-stained and still so fucking beautiful that it makes Phil's heart ache to even consider doing so.

"You almost did one time, I had to - god, it was terrible, I didn't jump intentionally for years after that," Dan says.

Phil frowns. "Wha - I did? I don't remember that one..."

Dan's hand finds the crease in his brow, traces over it. "But you remember the others?"

Phil leans forward into Dan, trying to think. Does he remember? Dan combs his fingers gently through the tangle of his too long-hair, waiting.

"I don't know,” he tells Dan’s collarbones. “Maybe? Everything feels sideways."

"It's okay. That'll pass, eventually, once - "

Phil sits up. "Once what?"

Dan looks stricken again. _I can’t tell you the things you want to know._

Phil pivots, needing _some_ answers. Anything. "Where did you come from? Or, like, when?"

Dan sighs, clambering out of his lap. Phil keeps hold of one of his hands, suddenly afraid that if he lets go, Dan might disappear into thin air.

Dan's thumb tracks a path over his knuckles. "From the future, like I told you that night on Skype. A while in the future."

"Okay, what, like a year from now?"

Dan tilts his head to the side, a smile softening his sharp features. "More than a year, Phil."

He tightens his grip on Dan's hand, heart fluttering. "Two years?"

Dan looks like he's waging some sort of war within himself. His hand is warm in Phil's, unmistakably real. "Can we get back under the covers?"

Phil swallows against the dry desert of his throat. "Okay."

He watches as Dan strips out of his bottoms and pulls the jumper over his head before making himself a home under the duvet. He looks up at Phil expectantly.

Phil hesitantly shucks his mismatched outfit and joins Dan under the blankets, laying far enough away that their bodies don’t quite touch. Dan frowns and moves in closer, wrapping an arm around Phil's waist and nudging a knee between his thighs. Phil feels frozen.

"Is this okay?" Dan asks, snapping him out of his paralysis.

"Yeah, of course." Phil exhales a nervous breath before giving in to a full entanglement of their limbs. "Just. Tell me how long. If you can."

Dan is so close that their noses brush together with each little movement of their bodies. A long stretch of time passes with only the sound of their breathing filling the room, the warmth and comfort of Dan’s eyes making his heartbeat finally slow. Phil erases the tiny distance between them, leaning his forehead against Dan’s. Waiting.  

After an eternity like this, Dan finally whispers, "It's our anniversary today, Phil." His thumb tracks a path across Phil’s cheek. "Well, not technically. But when I go back it'll still be the 19th."

"Our - " Phil's heart lurches. "Our anniversary?"

Dan nods, the tip of his nose tickling against Phil's. "It's - we keep saying ten years, everyone wants to pretend it's ten. It's not, it's nine, but what's the difference, y'know? I shouldn't be telling you any of this, I know you're probably freaking out, but it's okay. You always have trouble remembering the stuff I tell you anyway."

Phil can't think straight. Nine years? Him and Dan have been together for nine years?

_Maybe I'll know you forever._

"Phil? You okay? Say something, let me know you're not about to, like, spontaneously combust."

"I'm - " Phil can't say for sure that he's not about to do just that. "That's a long time," he breathes out, finally. It doesn’t feel like what he really wants to say, but it’s about all he can manage right now.

Dan laughs, kisses the corner of Phil’s mouth. “Yeah. It is. And it’ll be a lot longer, I think, I’ve never jumped forward but sometimes if I focus hard enough I can sort of...glimpse it, you know?”

“No, I don’t know!” Phil exclaims on a breathless laugh. This whole thing feels wild, incredulous. Everything about Dan is already too much, already more than he thinks he deserves. To see his life, _their_ life, stretched out before him like this - it’s just indescribable. The universe tilts on its axis yet again, but this time they're turning together. It's disorienting except for the solidness of Dan's body against his, except for the knowledge that today he's found something he'll never lose.

They talk for a long time after that, until the sun is high and bright in the sky and Dan is sure to miss his train if they don’t leave for Manchester soon. There’s only one more thing Phil really needs to know, anyway.  

"Are we happy?"

Dan smiles up at him. "Yeah. God, Phil, yeah, we're happy. When I go back, he'll - you'll still be asleep. There, in our flat. In our bed. We just got back from a...trip. A long one. An exhausting one. But it was amazing, it was so - never mind, that's too much, and it doesn't matter right now anyway. There’s so much ahead for us, Phil, you’ve no idea. We can - sometimes it feels like we can do anything together.” Dan presses the tips of his fingers against Phil’s temple. “Just - if this all feels fuzzy tomorrow, and it probably will, try to remember that. Remember that it’ll be you and me against the whole universe, always. He’ll - he needs you to remember. For all the times when it’s easier for him to forget.”

Phil frowns, not understanding, but Dan beats him to the questions perched on his lips, pressing his thumb against that delicate skin instead. “I know it doesn’t make any to sense to you yet. There’s no way for it to. Just...promise me you’ll try to remember, okay?”  

It feels like an impossible task. But Phil’s three days in and he’d already do anything for this boy. Including keeping some sort of bizarre, interdimensional promise.

“Okay.”

______________________________________________________

_I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time /_

_Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme_

______________________________________________________

“Where will the train go?” Phil asks. They’re ambling slowly through Manchester proper, delaying going into the station for as long as possible.

Dan looks over at him but won’t quite meet his eyes. “To Reading, obviously. Where else would it go?”

“Dan.”

He stops and turns in the middle of the pavement, so suddenly that Phil nearly trips over him. The city swarms around them, hundreds and hundreds on their mid-afternoon caffeine runs or walking their kids home from school.

“It goes to Reading, Phil. Really. Somewhere in the middle, I just...don’t.”

Phil’s hands feel a bit twitchy where they’re shoved into the pockets of his jacket. Dan looks honest and imploring and gorgeous and it feels inexplicably wrong to not be touching him right now. There’s a bundle of uneasy nerves settling somewhere near his sternum.

“Will you be okay?”

Dan smiles up at him, dimple caving in on one side. Phil has to dig his nails into his palm to quell the urge to press his thumb into it.

“‘Course I will be. Gotta go make some coffee to convince your lazy arse to get out of bed, we have work to do today.”

Phil pouts. “On our anniversary?”

Dan bounces on his toes, stretching up. For a fleeting moment, Phil thinks he might kiss him, right there in the middle of the pavement. But he doesn’t, just takes Phil by the elbow and tugs gently until they fall back into step together.

“Yes, even on our anniversary. It’s good work, though. It’s worth it.”

***

The train station finally comes into view. It’s time.

Phil goes with him as far as he can without a ticket. He pulls Dan into a little overhang, away from the rush of commuters hurrying towards their platforms.

Dan crowds into his space, enveloping him in a hug. It certainly goes on too long for the amount of people that can see them here, but he can’t find it in himself to care. When then finally break apart, Phil finds of one of Dan’s hands, holding it carefully between their bodies and the wall.

“Will I see you again? He asks. “Like, _you?_ Or - others?”

Dan worries his bottom lip between his teeth. “Maybe. It’s hard for me to say. So much of it is fluid, it’s malleable. But this moment - the days that I was here, I can’t mess with them too much. They’re too important to - to us. To what we become.”

“Then why come back at all? Why risk it?”

Dan laughs, shaking his head at himself. “Future me is gonna teach you a lot about _cognitive dissonance,_ Phil. I just - I can’t help it. I like seeing you like this. I like remembering how this felt. To - to be at the start of everything, with you.”

Over the intercom, a generic female voice announces the final boarding call for Dan’s train.

“You have to go,” Phil says softly, even as he tightens his grip on Dan’s hand. Dan pulls him into his arms again, hides a kiss against his temple.

“I love you, Phil,” Dan whispers into his ear. “Now and forever and every day in between.”

And then he’s gone, blending seamlessly into the throng of passengers. Phil stands in the alcove until long after the departure number disappears from the board, just letting his heart ache. The sky is already starting to darken by the time he makes his way back out to the street and onto a bus back to Rawtenstall.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, just looking for something to pass the time.

_dan: home safe <3 _

_dan: told ya you’d still be asleep. but you look beautiful this morning. think i’ll sleep a little longer, too. see you soon xx_

_phil: I’m not even gonna ask about the logistics of interdimensional texting._

_phil: [message send failure]_

Phil frowns, pressing down on the little red exclamation mark to resend the message. The bus is barely out of the city, there should still be plenty of cell service here. After a beat, it appears to have gone through. His leg jiggles nervously as he waits for a reply.

_dan: wot are u on about_

_dan: this train smells weird. i miss u and ur weird thoughts :(_

Phil sighs, running a hand over his face. Maybe he _should’ve_ asked about the logistics of interdimensional texting. But on the other end of that text now is Dan, his Dan,

(they’re all his Dan, but)

and so pesky complications of time and space just cease to matter.  

_phil: it’s nothing. just an idea i had, maybe i’ll make a video about it sometime._

_phil: see you soon xx_

**Author's Note:**

> reblog this work on tumblr [here](https://uselessphillie.tumblr.com/post/179196552060/fic-kairos)


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